The Setting Sun, the Rising Sun, the Day's End, or the Day's Begun

Good Monday morning to you all and I hope you had a lovely weekend!  I opened both days at work, nothing too exciting except for the wild and loud wind that brewed up over Saturday night.  Tina and I opened the store like normal; she was finishing setting up the pastry case and I was taking refrigerator temperatures when the power went out.  A pitch black, silent, creepy power outage.  After locking the door and checking the breaker box, we looked out the window to see that the whole block was out!

All we could do was wait.

Luckily the coffee I brewed for open was still hot so we had some caffeine, and we broke open a couple pastries to sample while sitting at the window and telling unobservant customers who walked up to the door without realizing that no lights means no coffee that we're temporarily closed.

After an hour and a couple calls in to Ameren to get a potential power up time (to no avail), I called our store manager to see what to do.  She told us we had to stay until it came back on and just find stuff to do in between monitoring fridge temps.  We moved all the sandwiches and retail food to one of the back freezers (I figured it would take longer for those fridges to lose their cool), and that was pretty much all we could do in the darkness so "stuff to do" became chatting, reading the newspaper, and sampling another pastry.

After three hours, the lights, music, and heater came back on and within ten minutes we had a line to the door.  Back to a typical Sunday morning at Starbucks!

(photo by e.hunt)

More Ice?

The other night I went ice skating with a couple work friends down at Steinberg, St. Louis' resident outdoor ice rink.

It was a crisp night, clear and a little warmer out than it has been, but still cold enough for the appropriate winter sporting vibe.  It wasn't too crowded so I could go fast and turn backwards when no one else was around.  Amy recently bought a new pair of skates and wants to pick up the sport again so we've decided to go every week or so and I can teach her new things as we both break in our skates.  This week it was crossovers and going backwards.  And what a picture-perfect locale to learn in!

(photos by e.hunt)

Lost in the Longing to Understand

Happy Friday, everyone!  Hope you've had a productive week and are ready to celebrate the weekend.  And since the last post was a month (!) ago, I hope you've had a productive last four weeks!  It's been a busy time for me; full of work, reorganizing my apartment, hanging out with friends, running at the gym, skating at the ice rink, and seeing the fam a couple times a week.  Whew!

Mom and I went to an antique mall and I found this great snowy street corner print that looks great paired with another similarly moody print.

And in hanging those I moved the Japanese hanging scroll to the hallway and paired it with the official 2020 Tokyo Olympics banner that Andrew and Juliana brought me from Japan.

Starbucks recently rebranded the retail space in the front of our store so I got to take home one of the shelving units where it fits in nicely next to the couch.  I've also been going through my clothes and storage boxes in my big closet.  In doing so I decided to move the hanging scarf organizer to the closet, rather than having it on my bedroom door. 

And if you were to go through the door and look to the left you would see a mountain of clothes and other things to be donated.  Always feels good to clean out and declutter.

(photos by e.hunt)